What follows appears as sidebar to an interview with Chip
Heath, PhD. at Stanford University’s Graduate
School of Business. Heath authored Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive
and Others Die, making salient points about why some ideas (and communicating
them) fly…and others flop.

Chip Heath’s research suggests that sticky ideas share six basic traits.

Simplicity. Messages are most memorable if they are short
and deep. Glib sound bites are short, but they don’t last. Proverbs such as the
golden rule are short but also deep [...]